“And so do I, Minister Ma.”
Ma peered at her curiously. “But an act of war against Taiwan should not go unanswered.”
“You are quite correct. It should not.”
Ma’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you can enlighten us, Madame President.”
Charlotte Soong nodded to one of the uniformed officers, General Wu Hsin-chieh, who was the Air Force Chief of Staff and the senior military officer of Taiwan. The general stepped around the conference table and pulled down a wall-length map at the end of the room. The map covered Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait, and the coast of mainland China.
With a long pointer, the general tapped an area on the mainland. “Here,” he said, and tapped three more places, “here, here, and here, according to our latest reconnaissance, the PLA is assembling an amphibious assault force of at least 80,000 troops.”
At this, a buzz of excited conversation erupted among the ministers. It was their worst nightmare. “Amphibious force?” said Ma Wang. “That can mean only one thing. They intend to invade us.”
General Wu nodded.
“But we must do something.”
The general didn’t reply. He nodded to Charlotte Soong, who stepped in front of the map and faced the ministers. “You are correct again, Minister. We must do something. And so we are.”
Darkness was settling over the South China Sea.
Maxwell rolled his Hornet wings-level in the groove. In the dwindling light, the gray mass of the USS Reagan filled his windscreen. At the port edge of the deck, he could see the Fresnel lens — the optical glide slope indicator. The yellow “ball” was between the green datum lights on the lens, indicating that Maxwell’s Hornet was on a precise descent path to the deck.
“Hornet ball, five-point-four.”
“Roger, ball.”
The contract was made. Maxwell was reporting to the LSO — Landing Signal Officer — that he had a visual reference on the ball, and that his remaining fuel was 5,400 pounds. With his terse reply, the LSO acknowledged that he was controlling the Hornet in the groove.
Maxwell knew the voice — Lieutenant Commander Big Mac MacFarquhar, the air wing LSO. As the senior LSO aboard the Reagan, Big Mac had the job of supervising all the squadron LSOs.
“A lii — ittle powerrrrr,” called Big Mac in his soothing LSO voice. Maxwell nudged the throttles forward, adding a tiny increment of thrust.
The Hornet swept over the ramp. Maxwell kept his eyes fixed on the ball, fine-tuning his control movements, keeping the ball in the center of the lens. The Hornet slammed down on the deck. Maxwell felt himself rammed forward into the harness straps as the tailhook engaged an arresting wire.
A good pass. Not perfect, but he knew he’d snagged the three wire. Of the four arresting wires strung across the carrier’s landing deck, number three was the target. It was called a “tweener” pass — somewhere in between a fair and an OK landing grade. The fact that he had snagged the three wire would weigh in his favor as the LSOs assigned his grade.
Following the yellow-shirts’ lighted wands, he taxied the Hornet to the starboard forward deck. Behind him in rapid succession the other members of his flight — B.J. Johnson, Pearly Gates, Flash Gordon — landed and exited the wires.
He was still climbing out of the cockpit when he saw Bullet Alexander, his squadron executive officer. He was wearing the standard-issue float coat survival vest and the Mickey Mouse cranial protector that was required equipment on the flight deck.
“Let me guess,” said Maxwell, stepping down on the steel deck. “CAG told you to get us down to the intel office for debriefing.” “CAG” was an extinct title that stood for “Commander, Air Group.” In the Navy’s tradition of retaining antiquated terms, it still applied to the Air Wing Commander.
Alexander kept a straight face. “Not exactly. What he said was — and I’m quoting verbatim here—‘Tell those peckerheads to get their sorry asses down here on the double.’”
Maxwell shrugged. No surprise. The world was waiting to hear why the President of Taiwan, while enjoying the protection of fighters from the Reagan’s air wing, now resided at the bottom of the South China Sea. Phones would be ringing at every military base from the USS Reagan to the White House.
He waited for his other three pilots to climb down from their jets. Wearing grim expressions, the pilots of his flight joined him. B.J. Johnson, who was the only woman pilot in the Roadrunner squadron, looked like she was going to a funeral.
With Maxwell in the lead, they descended the ladder to the O-3 level, then followed the long passageway to the intel office. No one spoke. Each pilot was alone with his thoughts. Gone was the usual jubilation, the wisecracking, the adrenaline rush of trapping back aboard a carrier at sea.
Gates broke the silence. “Are they gonna court-martial us?”
Maxwell looked over his shoulder. “What for?”
“We were supposed to get the Taiwanese President home in one piece. We blew it.”
B.J. Johnson whirled on Gates. “What do you mean? Our job was to intercept bogeys.” She jabbed a finger at Gates. “Did you tag a bogey?”
“No.”
“Nobody else did either. The goddamn Airbus just exploded. You saw it. It wasn’t our fault.” She turned to Maxwell, her voice cracking. “Isn’t that right, Skipper?”
Maxwell nodded. He could see the frustration and anger in all their faces. He gave B.J. a nudge on down the passageway. “That’s right. But don’t be surprised if nobody believes us.”
Commander Lei Fu-Sheng, captain of the Taiwanese frigate Kai Yang, watched in stunned fascination as the Harpoon missiles leaped from their launchers. He had never witnessed an actual firing of the Harpoons, and he was unprepared for the spectacle. He could see the plume of fire from each missile as it arced into the darkness. Against the black void of the Taiwan Strait, they looked like fire-tailed comets from hell.
The RGM-84L Harpoon missile had been delivered by the United States to the Taiwanese Navy as an anti-ship weapon. It hadn’t taken long for clever Taiwanese engineers to conclude that their newly acquired maritime weapons could be re-configured with different warheads and guidance software and made to behave like land-attack Tomahawk cruise missiles — a critical weapon that had been denied them by their American patrons. In its new role, the Harpoon could be directed against any coastal target, land or sea.
Including amphibious assault force depots.
As the first salvo of Harpoons flashed into the night, Commander Lei caught a flicker of light off to port. It was several miles distant, barely distinguishable in the inky blackness, but he knew it was the Kai Yang’s sister ship, Han Yang, firing her own complement of Harpoons. Taiwan possessed a total of four Cheng Kung-class guided missile frigates — all former U.S. Navy destroyers of the Perry class — and each was now on station in the Taiwan Strait, firing missiles at Chinese amphibious force depots.
“Battery one reports all missiles fired, Captain,” said the fire control officer over his sound-powered speaker. “Standing by battery two.”
Peering into the blackness, Lei tried to imagine the low-flying Harpoons skimming the sea toward the mainland. Retrofitted with GPS — Global Positioning System — guidance units, the surface-skimming Harpoons were autonomous weapons, requiring no further input from their owners. But they were subsonic missiles, nearly fifteen feet in length, vulnerable to intercept by radar-guided surface-to-air missiles as well as conventional anti-aircraft batteries. When matched against the instruments of sophisticated warfare, the Harpoon was a primitive weapon. Tonight’s success hinged on surprise — and the Air Force’s ability to take out the air defense sites.